When Associate Professor Chan Mei Yoke was a junior doctor, she met a young cancer patient whom she thought would not make it. He was so frail and small, she recalls, too weak to even cry.
But years later, she ran into him unexpectedly at the blood bank.
“It was so nice to see him well again, after all the traumatic times,” says Prof Chan, who is the Head and Senior Consultant of KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital’s (KKH) Haematology and Oncology Service.
This long-term relationship with her patients is among the reasons she was drawn to paediatric oncology, says Prof Chan, who enjoys the innocence and positive nature of children.
“Children handle adversity much better than adults. People sometimes ask how children in the paediatric ward can be so happy even with cancer. It’s because they live in the moment, and don’t worry about things that might or might not come,” she says.
One such former patient was 18-year-old Jarenn Foo, who Prof Chan cared for while he was batting Leukaemia in 2009 and 2010. The duos were reunited at this year’s Hair for Hope satellite event at KKH.
“I remember Jarenn well because he experienced very bad side-effects from the treatment, and yet he remained very positive. It’s very nice to see patients who are not defeated by their condition,” says Prof Chan, who shaved her head for the first time this year in support of Hair for Hope 2016.
While many have called her brave for going under the razor, Prof Chan says the real brave ones are her patients, the ones who don’t have a choice. Indeed, when she visited the paediatric oncology ward to show them her newly-shaven head, the children were nonplussed.
“They were like, what’s the big deal? We’re bald too,” she says, laughing. Perhaps this is what she means by innocence and what she likes best about the job.